I know that you are all aware of customer health scores.

But, do you make the most of them during the customer onboarding phase?

I’ve seen SaaS companies wait until after onboarding to take notice of health scores, and in some cases wait to even begin measuring it!

This creates a dangerous blind spot and potential business risk during the most vulnerable period of the customer relationship.

Customer health scores in onboarding aren't just another metric to track, they're your early warning system that transforms reactive customer management into proactive customer success.

Let's explore why implementing these scores from day one dramatically improves outcomes for both your customers and your bottom line.

Health is important, trust me I’m a doctor. 😏 ↓

🧪 The Project: Onboarding Health Scores

Let’s first look at how to create a customer health score before we look at how to utilise this data in the onboarding period.

Step 1: Define core health indicators

Identify metrics that genuinely reflect customer health during onboarding. Avoid the common mistake of tracking everything possible.

Examples to focus on:

• Engagement metrics: Frequency of logins, feature adoption percentage, time spent in platform. Think about what is most important for your solution.

• Progress indicators: Completion rate of onboarding tasks, time to first value.

• Sentiment data: NPS/CSAT scores after key milestones, support ticket volume and resolution time.

• Stakeholder involvement: Number of active users, executive participation in check-ins.

This will give you a broad enough view to create a valuable health score.

Step 2: Create a weighted system

Not all metrics carry equal importance. Develop a point system with weighted categories.

As an example (weighting will be different for every company so create it accordingly):

• Usage/adoption metrics: 40% of total score

• Implementation progress: 30% of total score

• Satisfaction indicators: 30% of total score

This approach prevents surface-level engagement from masking deeper implementation issues.

Step 3: Establish health score thresholds

Define clear score ranges that trigger specific actions. Here is an example:

• 85-100: Healthy - Continue with standard onboarding process.

• 70-84: Moderate risk - Increase touch points, verify milestone completion.

• Below 70: High risk - Immediate intervention required, executive escalation.

Document these thresholds and required actions in your customer success playbook.

Remind yourself of what to do when onboarding goes wrong from my previous project. ↓

Step 4: Track health scores based on resources

I’m a big believer that you don’t need software tools to get started with these processes.

The more you track manually when you are starting out, the more you will realise what is needed when you put a business case together to purchase software in the future.

Step 5: Integrate health scores into your workflow

Now that we have the health score, let’s look at how to make it an active tool that can drive the onboarding process.

Milestone-based interventions

Create specific playbooks tied to health score thresholds at each onboarding phase.

Executive alignment

Use health scores to manage internal and external expectations.

Flexible onboarding pathing

Create adaptive onboarding journeys based on health indicators.

🤓 The Analysis

Don’t think of customer health scores as surveillance tools and things you report to your boss every quarter.

Think of them as a way to guide proactive tasks in the most critical phase of your customer relationship - onboarding!

You can transform onboarding from a checklist-driven process into a responsive journey that adapts to each customer's unique signals purely by focusing on the health score from day one.

What you'll achieve with this project:

• Faster time-to-value

• Improved internal resource allocation

• More predictable revenue forecasting

• Enhanced cross-functional team alignment